swombat.com

daily articles for founders

Daniel is the cofounder and MD of GrantTree, previously CTO/cofounder of Woobius and Vocalix, a full-time entrepreneur since 2007, and founder of swombat.com. I previously worked at Accenture and studied Physics at the University of Oxford.

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Swombat.com started off as an individual effort, but it's now becoming the work of a team (to be announced).

Together, on swombat.com, we summarise and comment on the best articles for founders each day, as well as occasionally post our own thoughts and advice, so you can read the most useful articles while focusing on building your own startup.

I've argued before that mentors are essential to startup success, but who trains the mentors? Can you get a mentorship mentor? As it happens, you can, and much like most coaches are themselves being coached, mentors usually have their own mentors.

That said, it's interesting to try and write down what a good mentor should do. Here's a list, by LeanStartupMachine mentor Giff Constable, of ten best practices for being a startup mentor. The habits are:

Always start by defining the fundamental idea behind a product or service